Acta Universitatis Danubius. Communicatio, Vol 10, No 2 (2016)

Abstract:
Our
paper presents the importance of the journal for developing the
communication competences and social and professional integration of
students. These aspects are important but often
they are neglected
in academic activities, because the professional skills are priority
in Curricula
of faculties. In this paper we analyze the theoretical importance of
the journal and its forms to present from communicate and reflexive
perspectives. The paper offers a few examples of good practice which
hopes the teacher to develop the communication competences of
students.

The university
as a training and development environment offers to students,
regardless of the profession for which they decided to prepare, a lot
of learning situations needed for the enlargement of communication
and social integration competences of its beneficiaries. Those
competences are subsumed both to training and improvement of students
in the chosen professional domain on the hand, to the social
relationship and integration in the community which belong them, on
the other hand. The professional skills are very well represented in
the studies programs, but the social competences, the communication
competences and of the social-integration are not so generous
represented in the academically curricula.
This situation is not an evidence of less importance of them or that
these competences were neglected.

In fact, the communication
competences can be developing every time, most in the professional
education. So, the communication competences are necessary for
realize the objectives of the specialized disciplines.

Professionaleducation
has a theoretical, scientifically and practical, technological,
characteristics. But it is
necessary to encourage the intellectual, socio-affective,
psycho-physical and communication activities because the professional
education needs to involve the student’s personal and creative
development.The
professional education prepares the young generation for tomorrow’s
society (Peretti, 1996); it contributes to the education of
creativity and of the social responsibility.
Thus, the individual’s responsibility and morality are
significant components that add to the professional abilities.

Therefore,
professional education must be correlated with the active abilities
promoted and built by all the academic subjects. Due to its valances,
it must play an important role also in the training of the didactic
staff, no matter their specialization.

2.
Hypothesis, Objectives and Observations

Our paper
starts from the premise that it is necessary to develop the
communication competences in the same measure with the professional
competences. Though the communication competences are not explicitly
included in the Data
Sheets
(„Fișele disciplinelor”) of the professional
academic specializations, we must give a special attention to their
competences. In generally, these Data
Sheets
have not the instruments and strategies oriented to the development
of communication competences.

Therefore, we offer in our paper
a some of examples and instrument which can be easy applied to any
professional training field. Among them we attribute a special place
to the journal. In this way, our proposal may contribute to the
configuration of some educational strategies centered on the
development of the communication competences to the students. The
journal, especially the reflexive one, is capable to be a didactic
instrument which guides the modernization of education. From this
point of view, the students are being helped to know themselves and
the others, to manifest a correct attitude towards themselves and
others, towards life in general.

Our proposal may positively
contribute to the configuration of some educational strategies
centered on the development of the communicate competences to the
students. Also, it can be proved that the success of a didactic
activity is assured by the quality of the reflections and that due to
these facts.

The academic prepare of students
is oriented towards to their profession, on former and develop those
competences associated to profession chosen by the students. The
future specialists must have a very good professional training but
they need to have the abilities of relating to the other, from in the
same profession or not, and to transmit to the other the professional
knowledge, to develop the interpersonal relationship.

Next, we
selected a few frequently and generally professional competences,
professional skills, from the academic Data Sheets. We correlated
those competences with the communication situations and the social
relationship situations. In this way, we identified communication
competences which are associated with the professional skills. This
relationship between the communication competences and the
professional skills can be better shown in the following table.

Table 1. The communication competences and professional education

Professional
competences

Communication
competences

Social
relationship situations

to
understand and explain the
procedures
to obtain a
certain product

to
cooperate efficiently onin
groups;

to
manifest an equality and tolerance attitude

common
and differentiated work;

tasks
in learning applications groups

to
compare the interpretation of provisions legislative

to
participate to the construction of a collective opinions;

to
respect the rules
of the group activities

participating
at the debates

to
identify the ways that ensure
the promotion of
product's operating principles

to
shallow judgement under the form of the appreciations of the
type: „I have found out”, „I do not know”

collaborative
learning;

solving
the cases-studie;

the
work tasks;

to
develop the projects

to
apply the principles and rules of professional conduct

to
obedience, to respect the others opinions and completion

to
make in collective or in the small group the analysis of the
lessons and of the plan from the perspective of one’s own
goals;

to
establish one’s own targets on what concerns the
professional development

involve
in the debate activities or the critical analysis

to
form the
interest for the professional development and self-improvement
of students

to
compose and saying the discourse;

to
make some applicative techniques to practice one’s skills
and abilities, or to interiorize knowledge;

to
establish in group or collective connections or relations
between the experiences gained upon which the students have
reflected in an organized manner by means of comparisons,
analyses and interpretations.

evaluation
and self-evaluation exercises;

debate
„Pro / Contra”

The Table shows that training and
development of professional skills needs to the communication and
social competences. The student prepare better for the profession
chosen if he is involved in the group activities, if he is able to
construct a discourse, a speech, to order, transmit and receive
information.

During him
professional prepare, the student can be required to
initiate the contacts with the colleagues, teachers, nondidactical
persons from the university, with the instructors of specialized
practice. In this way, the student realizes with these persons a
connection through he communicates and receives information which can
influence the persons and their relationship. The support of the
message sent or received can be a material support (specialized
information, dates, documents etc.) or immaterial support (ideas,
affects, convinces, impressions etc.), Also the student may use the
secondary tools and techniques of communication and relationship
(writings, mass-media, video-audio, virtual and electronical
instruments) (Strampel
& Oliver, 2007).

Communicating at the
interpersonal level, the student can transmit and share ideas,
information and emotions. The communication competences help to
student to identify the problems of the different situations, to find
the solutions for these problems, to make decisions and to
prevent/diminish conflicts, disputes. Thus, the student develops the
relationship competences (working in the group, in clubs etc.). The
student must be prepared also from the perspective of the
organizational communication which is specific to the chosen
professional domain. Thus, the student could former the communication
competences necessary to prevent, manage and diminish the conflicts
generated by the obstacles which occurring the interpersonal and
social communication, like as cultural, religious, gender, status,
economical and ages differences. All of these aspects above mentioned
are important for the future specialist especially that he can has
more responsibility, supplementary ones, as the management,
coordination and execution responsibilities. Having these
supplementary responsibilities, the student can composes and
transmits the messages, releases to the different institutions, to
local community or the another categories of public.

The
communication and social relationship competences can be training in
the same time with training professional skills. In this sense, in
the academic space the teaching and training strategies can be used
to realize these formative dimensions.
The problematized learning, the algorithmic and conversational
strategies, the cooperative learning, discovery learning, the
collaborative learning (Nicu, 2007) are a few examples used in the
professional training students. All of these didactical modalities,
in their application, they calls the communication and relationship
competences.

Also, the reflexive activities
are important to training the communication competences. Those
activities performed by students can have the forms of the didactical
games or the reflection exercises. The reflexive activities are
intended to allow the students to think about the work done, the
experience, impressions and emotions lived after the courses,
seminars, practical applications.

By gaining the
ability “to look back” upon what they have done or
experienced (Nagata, 2006), the students can repair or develop their
abilities according to their own interests and potential. Personal
reflection helps students to restructure the essence of the learned
and to want to learn more. Of course, the professional dimension of
those activities must be not
neglected. More and more, the reflexive activities help the student
to realize a very good communication with himself. In this way, it is
assured a high
quality
of the intrapersonal
communication.

In
the specialty literature the personal reflection is presented like as
“a method of the communication based on the internal language”
(as a dialog interiorized) (Forthergill, 1974) and as a modality of
the mental action which conducts to discover their own person. This
is an action subordinated to the critical spirit.
In general, the reflexivity appears as a conscious attitude, brought
about and followed in an evaluative purpose

Reflexivity
refers to a person’s attitude towards an active meditation over
his/ her own deeds and feelings, over their personal accomplishments
and over the changes produced in his/ her psycho-behavioral and
affective- volitional structure.

The reflexive
abilities are both the meta-cognitive competence and behavior, on the
first hand, and the career management and the personal development
competences, on the second hand. Reflexivity has manifested in
different forms, passing from the efforts of knowledge and
self-knowledge, especially by means of introspection, to those that
urge people to have a skeptical look on the world. The
observations include their impressions, feelings, recommendations and
suggestions
So, the reflexivity is linked to self-knowledge and self-development,
the basic sides of self-education.

Combining
reflexivity with the social learning will help to identify and apply
the strategies of inter-knowing and of adapting (Moon, 1999),
respectively of psycho-socio harmonization.

Next,
we propose to insist on the Journal, because this learning and
reflecting instrument allows a more cognitive, affective and
motivational involvement of students. In
this journal the students have passed experiences, feelings,
opinions, knowledge and skills obtained in them learning process

The
Journal
is a learning instrument through which it is recorded the events,
ideas, and personal experiences. From the reflexive perspective, the
journal is a dialogue of student carried with himself in learning
about their own mental processes. However, the journal develops the
learning process by the introspection and reflection.

Such as a didactical instrument,
the journal has many conception and presentation forms, variances,
depending on:

the purpose for which the
journal is used:

to describe something or
somebody;

to observe any changes of
social, political realities or of the human mentality;

to relate about a reality, an
event or to reflect on those and to present some impressions;

to develop the critical
thinking;

to reflect about the experience
and their modifications suffered;

to learn by the experiential
activities;

to share the experiences with
colleagues.

the actors who are coming to
complete the journal:

personal/individual journal;

journal
of the group/the class.

the kind of lead mod of
activity:

journal requested and directed
by teacher;

the control of writing belongs
only the student;

spontaneous or directed journal.

the time of writing:

continuous or limited writing;

in
a certain sequence of a lesson or after the lesson:

the specify of learning
discipline (the accountability evidence, the registration of the
events conducted on a certain period of time, the registration of
the sociological changes);

the mod of exploiting of the
dates of journal (read notes, written, publicized);

the support
of composing: on the paper, on the electronic tools, online
(MediaWiki, PBWiki, MoinMoin, Wikispaces, SeedWiki, TWiki, ZWiki,
OpenWiki, SocialText, TiddlyWiki etc).
All
the products of the students’ activities being archived and
open to comments, measurement and appreciation by their colleagues
or by other “visitors” as a portfolio (Dobrica, 2006).

In conclusion, the journal has
more variances but all of these can be adapted by the research
interests or by personal intention, by own life interests.

Starting from these observations,
we propose the following short classification of the forms of
journal:

Figure
1. The types of journals

Because the use of the journal is
a difficult problem of the academically education and because this
learning instrument contributes to involve of communication
competences and to socio-professional integration of the students, we
offer to teachers the following practical suggestions:

the
dates on the journal are not genuine; these dates depending on the
context of writing, the conditions that influenced the moment of
writing of journal. From this cause the dates cannot
be critically/objectively examined;

the problem of journal must be
subsumeted to the analyze of discourse;

the student needs to time for
complete the journal;

the students must understand
that building up reflexivity competences is a difficult process
which needs time, perseverance and a lot of attention;

the reflection activity, for
writing the journal, must be guided by well determined criteria;

the activities of reflexive and
analyze writing must be “negotiated” with the students
to following some clearly established rules;

the teacher must observe
systematically the students, to get permanently informed about the
students’ particularities, interests and needs (intellectuals,
professional and affective needs, abilities, types of intelligence,
level of motivation for each new activity, etc);

the writing of journal can be
following by the elaboration of the individual plan for professional
development;

the student could take the
decision to choose a certain learning activity and a certain working
strategy;

in
the writing process, the students are encouraged to doing the
following activities:

to register thoughts, feelings;

to communicate opinions,
experiences, personal impressions regarding the developed activity,
their own activity and that of the colleagues;

to formulate requirements
regarding the clarification of notions, solving some contradictions;

the teacher must permanently
motivate their students in order to make them participate at the
learning activity;

of course, the reflection
activity remains in the sphere of the subjectivity, of the personal.

3.
Conclusion

The purpose of professional
education is to train the future specialist, to prepare him for the
social changes that may occur. This aspect represents one of the main
components of education and it would be best to reach it as soon as
possible in order to create the premises of a concrete conception and
a motivating attitude by means of assimilating some ethical and
ecological values and principles which define the relationships
between society-nature-technology. In this way the communication
competences are very important in the educational process.

Being used to reflect upon the
things that they have done and to communicate their dates, the
students will become more responsible on what concerns their own
learning process and the teacher-student relation will be better;
also, the learning difficulties will be diminished. Consequently,
reflexivity and communicate create motivational situations;
reflecting upon what one has done or on what one could have done and
communicating the date increase the trust in one’s own
strenghts and increase the desire to go on with getting to know and
to build up one’s personality.

Thus, we consider that is not a
non-sense to attribute reflexivity an essential role in education. It
is our duty: that of including reflexivity among the recognized
principles of the educational process. Of, course, the reflection
activity remains in the sphere of the subjectivity, of the personal.

The articles that are published in the journal are distributed under CC BY license. Users can distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon our articles, even commercially, as long as they are credited for the original creation.